The Core

I keep running into rumors talking about an Apple merger of some sort thats supposed to bump the stock 50% up.  I don't have any myself.

yeah, that would make sense.  It must be a major buy for them to call it a merger.  It's been on my radar for at least a month but now I hear it's days/weeks away.

I'd hate to see Apples closed divisive approach applied to a major search offering (with them behind it, it would become major).  Not sure whether that is better or worse than the current monopoly. Really close call for me.

However I can see it happening. It's been talked about as a theoretical possibility at least for years.

There has also been some talk about Apple buying Twitter since they have failed in all other attempts at social networking.  Jobs always said Apple's big war chest of cash was for buying something really big.  Personally, I'd rather they blow their money on search and not screw up Twitter.


OT

The point has been raised that FB ought to buy Bing from M$, or anyway develop their own search engine.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/microsoft-should-sell-bing-to-facebook-analyst-says/2012/04/20/gIQAg5Q7VT_story.html?

/OT

I'm having a hard time thinking up really large Apple acquisitions that would not trigger anti-trust problems except maybe Yahoo.  Buying Yahoo would give Apple a web based outlet for their ad networks and an email platform to compete against MS and Gmail, but everything else at Yahoo just seems so neglected and half finished.